At least one person was killed and 29 were injured after a steel girder collapsed yesterday into the basement of a Singapore office building under construction, a local member of parliament said.

The injured workers were primarily from Bangladesh and India, said S Iswaran, the MP for the West Coast region where the accident happened, told reporters at the construction site.

"I understand three or four may be trapped," he said.

It is the second construction accident to occur in the affluent city state in little more than a week, after a highway near the downtown office district collapsed on April 20 killing four people.

Nandarajan Subhas, a spokesman for the Singapore Civil Defense Force, said two sniffer dogs were combing the site for survivors but no more casualties were expected.

The accident happened near the site of an old military complex on the western side of the island state where the government is building an office development designed for new media industries featuring a tall twin tower complex.

At 1:45pm (1:45 a.m. EDT) the workers were about 90 feet below ground level building a six-storey car park when part of a steel girder collapsed onto them, said Lim Ken Chai, a senior engineer for Jurong International, the consultants for the project.

"The cause of the collapse is still unknown at this moment and search and rescue efforts by the SCDF are currently underway at the site," said Jurong Town Corp, owners of the project.